Stanbic waives arrangement fees under new loan drive

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Stanbic Bank has announced a new facility that will enable its customers to access an unsecured loan of up to 350 million without any arrangement fees. The campaign dubbed Oil Sorted will be running for the next ninety days. The unsecured loan also covers the child’s medical insurance at six million shillings.

Salim Kitagenda, the Head of products at Stanbic Bank, told journalists that the facility mainly targets parents seeking to pay school fees or those seeking financial independence. It is also targeting customers seeking mortgages in the form of houses.

He adds that in the new move, parents have the possibility of obtaining up to five million shillings interest-free cash advances instantly and return it in a shorter period.

This is the second that the bank is running the oil sorted campaign. School owners can apply to access up to 3 billion shillings for a 5-year school development loan.

The 90-day strategic lending window, dubbed “Oli Sorted,” also looks into supporting school systems and operations, and Albert Yiga, the head of the education sector at Stanbic Bank Uganda, says to run these institutions, proprietors also have access to unsecured loans to keep the school afloat as parents look out for initial deposits.

“This is the time when school owners find it hard to cope with the beginning of term expenses, figuring out how to pay suppliers and service providers since parents expect their children to eat and have all the utilities irrespective of whether they paid fees or not. So with this in mind, we have put an unsecured loan facility of up to 500 million, with no loan arrangement fees, and payable within the term,” he explained.

He adds that the program also extends cashback of up to 500,000 shillings to parents who use the bank’s payment platforms in school fees transactions, and that there is the new school development loan for schools’ big development plans like construction of new blocks, and the support is up to four billion shillings.

The program not only emphasizes affordable financing to support educational programs, the same has been extended to housing, whereby society can now access zero arrangement fee loan facilities for 100 percent construction of a house which has not been the case.

Though the “Oli Sorted” program is for a limited period, it is an indicator of a big shift in Uganda’s credit market by tier-one institutions, who have always been accused of too much bureaucracy, which explains Ugandans running to tier-four institutions for credit.

This move is also a great step towards more relaxed and affordable credit financing, which is a good indicator for the financial inclusion agenda.

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